Page 12 of Under My Skin

She returns words of love and then waves to Lia before calling my name to grab my attention. “Maybe you should invite Cam next time? I’m sure he’d love it, and I know you would too,” she says with a wink, revealing the fact that she knows my crush is still going strong.

“I’ll think about it,” I reply, knowing full well that I won’t.

I jump in the car and wince when I land on my side.

“Jeez, Lizzie, do you need to go to the hospital? What if you broke something when you fell?” Lia asks, true concern lacing her voice.

“It’s just a bruise. I promise.” I lift up my dress to show her and she just stares without blinking.

“That isnotjust a bruise, Elizabeth Montgomery,” she says on a gasp. “That is bad, like, really bad. I have never seen a bruise that big or as black and blue before.” She moves her hand to touch it and then whips it back when she realizes what she’s doing. “How did you jump up and walk back to your apartment after it happened? I would have stayed on the ground and started crying and demanding an ambulance.”

“It was the adrenaline from extreme embarrassment, I guess.” I adjust my dress and carefully put my seatbelt on. “Anyway, I’m fine really. I just have to be more careful. It’ll be gone in a week. I’m sure of it.”

“If you say so,” Lia murmurs unconvincingly and starts to drive away.

“Alright, moving on. I’m so excited for tonight. We’re going to have so much fun, and I’m convinced Ellie is going to as well.”

“I guarantee it. It’s my mission in life at this point. I can’t watch her wither away in that coffee shop day after day. She’s too pretty and too sweet to be acting like a seventy-year-old spinster,” Lia says with conviction, as if she’s pleading her case in court.

“I agree. Tonight is going to be a blast. Just what we need.”

Or…maybe not.

7

CAMERON

I’m sittingat the kitchen table watching the girls finish dinner while I let my brain decompress from the day. I need a break. Like, really bad. Thank God for my younger sister coming over in a little while to watch them so I can go out with the guys to grab a beer and catch up.

My phone chirps in my pocket, and I watch as our group chat lights up.

Reid: Still coming, right, Cam?

Me: Try and stop me.

Liam: First round’s on you.

“Dad, no phones at the table,” Mackenzie says with a serious look. This girl is six going on sixteen.

“You’re right. Putting it away,” I say as I stuff it back into the pocket of my jeans with a smile.

This may not be the life I imagined, but this is a great life. And it’s getting better every day.

Nine months ago, my now ex-wife told me she didn’t love me anymore and was leaving me for a rich Wall Street guy she met online. But she wasn’t only leaving me—she was leaving our girls, too. She stated, very nonchalantly, that they didn’t fit into the new chapter of her life. She said having two young daughters wasn’tconduciveto the lifestyle she wanted to live.

That’s it. Cold and calculated. No sadness or regret. Nothing. It was the most bizarre thing I had ever witnessed in my life. She talks to them maybe once a month over the phone and acts as if she didn’t turn her back on her daughters—her own flesh and blood. Luckily, the girls aren’t taking it as hard as I thought they would, but her barely being present at home probably lent to that.

For a while, I blamed myself for marrying her and having kids. I don’t think she ever really wanted them—she had them to placate me.

When I met Renee, I was young and stupid. It was my rookie year in the NFL, and I was at a party thrown by one of my teammates. She was beautiful and career-driven, focused on her modeling, while I devoted all my time to football, making sure I was going to live up to my performance in college. For the most part, we fit. Being with her…made sense, I guess.

It went sour when I broke my leg on the practice field two years ago while I was playing for Chicago. My retiring at the ripe old age of thirty-two wasn’t what she signed up for, even though money wasn’t an issue—I had saved more than enough from my contracts and had enough endorsements for us to live more than comfortably. The issue was that I was now home twenty-four seven, so I didn’t want a nanny or a full-time housekeeper. I wanted us to be more hands-on with the girls and live a more normal life. Overnight, I became Mr. Mom while she barely wanted to be Mom.

She started going out more, and we grew apart. It didn’t surprise me as much as it should have when she finally came clean and told me she had been seeing someone else and that she wanted a divorce. It honestly didn’t even hurt.

All I wanted was to make sure my girls were safe. Anything else was secondary.

Mackenzie and Addy are the only reasons I continue scraping the shit off my shoes every day with a smile on my face, even when I feel like everything is falling apart.

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